Boris Johnson has accused Obama of Brexit 'hypocrisy'

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President Barack Obama is going to use his visit to the UK next month to try and convince British people to vote to stay in the EU - and Mayor of London Boris Johnson isn't happy about it. Writing in The Telegraph, Johnson likened Obama's upcoming visit to a "deus ex machina," sweeping in to "pronounce" on the "referendum."

Johnson, who in the absence of anyone else, is becoming the de-facto leader of the campaign to leave the EU, is furious that Obama will apparently tell Britons staying in the EU is the only way the UK can retain influence in the world. Johnson says it is "exorbitant hypocrisy" for a US President to advocate this view.

"I also think it is wholly fallacious - and coming from Uncle Sam, it is a piece of outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy."

The reason that Johnson believes Obama is being hypocritical, is because he argues the concept of the EU is the antithesis of America's own values. Here is how Johnson explains it, the added emphasis is ours.

"There is no country in the world that defends its own sovereignty with such hysterical vigilance as the United States of America. This is a nation born from its glorious refusal to accept overseas control. Almost two and a half centuries ago the American colonists rose up and violently asserted the principle that they - and they alone - should determine the government of America, and not George III or his ministers. To this day the Americans refuse to kneel to almost any kind of international jurisdiction. Alone of Western nations, the US declines to accept that its citizens can be subject to the rulings of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. They have not even signed up to the Convention on the Law of the Sea. Can you imagine the Americans submitting their democracy to the kind of regime that we have in the EU?"

"So why is it essential for Britain to comply with a system that the Americans would themselves reject out of hand? Is it not a blatant case of "Do as I say, but not as I do"?"

According to Johnson, Obama is going to intervene in the EU referendum simply for reasons of self-interest. He says the US sees the EU as a way of "tidying up a continent" that used to keep going to war and as useful buffer to keep Russia in check.